The Scanner: Retired battalion chief in hot water, BART...

1of3Two people died when a fire ripped through an apartment building early Monday morning in the 6200 block of Eastlawn Street in East Oakland.Photo: St Lowitsch / Getty Images / St Lowitsch / Getty Images

3of3San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, (left) leads Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, into the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, Calif. on Tues. July 7, 2015, for his arraignment on suspicion of murder in the shooting death of Kate Steinle on San Francisco's Pier 14 last Wednesday.Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

A former Contra Costa County Fire Protection District battalion chief was charged with a dozen felonies for allegedly claiming bogus overtime hours and falsifying payroll records.

Louis Manzo Jr. of Danville took vacation time and then changed his time card to claim pay for special assignments outside of his regular duties, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office said Friday. When officials investigated the GPS location of his work vehicle, they found he never attended the events, prosecutors said.

“Public employees must always be held to a higher standard as stewards of taxpayer dollars,” said Deputy District Attorney Dodie Katague. “Employees in positions of trust and management must conduct themselves in an honorable manner. Manzo took advantage of his knowledge of Con Fire’s internal system to fraudulently (misrepresent) his hours and time off requests, in two separate fraud schemes.”

Manzo, 53, joined the district as a firefighter in 1989 and became a battalion chief in June 2014. He declined comment when reached by telephone Friday. He faces six counts of misappropriation of public funds and six counts of grand theft of personal property. If convicted, he could face up to to nine years in state prison.

The scheme cost the agency, which covers 304 square miles in Contra Costa County, $46,000 in direct salary payments and $19,000 in covering shifts while Manzo was out of the office or claimed to be on a special assignment, officials said. Prosecutors began investigating his time cards and schedules earlier this year after other agency officials reported the alleged misconduct.

Fire Chief Lewis T. Broschard III said in a written statement that district officials ordered an internal investigation “immediately after discovering timekeeping irregularities.” Manzo was placed on leave last December.

“As public servants, we rightfully hold ourselves to the highest standards of conduct, and the public expects no less,” Broschard said.

In 2018, Manzo received $452,870.58 in total salary and benefits, according to Transparent California, a public employee database. Of that amount, Manzo reportedly received $116,080.63 in overtime pay.

Manzo, who is due in court Monday, could be forced to forfeit his pension or have part of it recalculated without the fraudulent vacation days, prosecutors said.

Ex-pol pleads guilty in BART coffee-shop laundering scheme

Former state Assemblyman Terry Goggin pleaded guilty to laundering money that he told investors he would use to expand a chain of coffee shops at BART stations.

Goggin, a Democrat who represented San Bernardino, was a legislator from 1974 until 1984, when he was defeated for re-election. He chaired the Assembly Natural Resources Committee in the early 1980s, was a friend of then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, and came to San Francisco to practice law after Brown was elected mayor in 1996.

Indicted by a federal grand jury last year on multiple counts of money laundering and fraud, Goggin, 78, pleaded guilty in San Francisco on Wednesday to a felony charge of money laundering. Prosecutors said he admitted deceiving investors in a company he founded, Metropolitan Coffee & Concessions, which owned four Peet’s Coffee & Tea shops in BART stations.

Goggin sought funding from 2007 through early 2014 to expand the shops and build new ones at Balboa Park and Civic Center stations. Prosecutors said he lied to investors about his plans and failed to inform them about the financial state of his company, which later went bankrupt. In 2015, another operator took over the storefront coffee shops at Montgomery, Embarcadero, Berkeley and Pittsburg/Bay Point stations.

The company received $585,000 from Lakeshore Partners, an Oakland firm owned by four investors, for the Civic Center shop, and $100,000 from another investor for the Balboa Park project. Prosecutors said Goggin admitted that in September 2013 he redirected nearly all of the $685,000 to bank accounts for other ventures that the investors hadn’t agreed to.

Goggin must repay at least $685,000 in restitution as part of his sentence, prosecutors said. He is free on bond and is scheduled to be sentenced April 1.

San Francisco D.A. drops gun charge against Garcia Zarate

The San Francisco district attorney’s office formally dropped a lone gun possession charge Wednesday against Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, the man acquitted of killing Kate Steinle on the city’s Pier 14 more than four years ago.

Dropping the case was essentially a formality given that Garcia Zarate already served the maximum time in jail for the charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and is currently in federal custody.

“The federal government has charged the defendant for the same conduct, so we’re going to step aside and let the federal government take the case,” said Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office.

The gun used in the July 1, 2015, killing of Steinle had been stolen in San Francisco from a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger’s car. The burglary has never been solved. Garcia Zarate’s attorneys said he found the gun along the waterfront and that it accidentally went off, firing a bullet that richocheted off the pavement and hit Steinle.

Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges in the Steinle case, sparking a national debate about immigration and sanctuary laws. He had been released from county jail before the killing despite a federal request that he be held for his sixth deportation back to Mexico.

After the acquittal, Garcia Zarate was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition and being an undocumented immigrant in possession of a firearm and ammunition.